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In the pressure of "publish or perish", jumping the gun is all too common an occurrence. This is such a case in my opinion. Well thought out techniques and well considered hypotheses are critical when trying to prove groundbreaking ideas. With good referees things will be sorted out and the path to the truth should reappear.

Cracks in Pluto's Moon Could Indicate it Once Had an Underground Ocean

If the icy surface of Pluto's giant moon Charon is cracked, analysis of the fractures could reveal if its interior was warm, perhaps warm enough to have maintained a subterranean ocean of liquid water, according to a new NASA-funded study.

Pluto is an extremely distant world, orbiting the sun more than 29 times farther than Earth. With a surface temperature estimated to be about 380 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (around minus 229 degrees Celsius), the environment at Pluto is far too cold to allow liquid water on its surface. Pluto's moons are in the same frigid environment.

Pluto's remoteness and small size make it difficult to observe, but in July of 2015, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will be the first to visit Pluto and Charon, and will provide the most detailed observations to date.

This artist concept shows Pluto and some of its moons, as viewed from the surface of one of the moons. Pluto is the large disk at center. Charon is the smaller disk to the right.

Construction begins on a new alien-hunting telescopePosted by: Jason McClellan June 19, 2014

Workers took the first step in building the world’s largest optical and infrared telescope on Thursday, June 19 by blowing up the top of a mountain. This alien-hunting telescope will be how large? The answer is extremely large.

As its name describes, the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) will be massive. The telescope’s main mirror will be approximately one hundred twenty eight feet in diameter and composed of seven hundred ninety eight hexagonal six foot mirror segments, each of which can be moved independently. As Wired points out, “The current crop of really big telescopes pale in comparison.”

American astrophysicists who announced just months ago what they deemed a breakthrough in confirming how the universe was born now admit they may have got it wrong.

The team said it had identified gravitational waves that apparently rippled through space right after the Big Bang.

If proven to be correctly identified, these waves -- predicted in Albert Einstein's theory of relativity -- would confirm the rapid and violent growth spurt of the universe in the first fraction of a second marking its existence, 13.8 billion years ago.

The apparent first direct evidence of such so-called cosmic inflation -- a theory that the universe expanded by 100 trillion trillion times in barely the blink of an eye -- was announced in March by experts at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

The detection was made with the help of a telescope called BICEP2, stationed at the South Pole.

After weeks in which they avoided the media, the team published its work Thursday in the US journal Physical Review Letters.

In a summary, the team said their models "are not sufficiently constrained by external public data to exclude the possibility of dust emission bright enough to explain the entire excess signal," as stated by other scientists who questioned their conclusion. Story COntinues

The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but
progress. -- Joseph JoubertAttachment 1008

American astrophysicists who announced just months ago what they deemed a breakthrough in confirming how the universe was born now admit they may have got it wrong.

The team said it had identified gravitational waves that apparently rippled through space right after the Big Bang.

If proven to be correctly identified, these waves -- predicted in Albert Einstein's theory of relativity -- would confirm the rapid and violent growth spurt of the universe in the first fraction of a second marking its existence, 13.8 billion years ago.

The apparent first direct evidence of such so-called cosmic inflation -- a theory that the universe expanded by 100 trillion trillion times in barely the blink of an eye -- was announced in March by experts at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

The detection was made with the help of a telescope called BICEP2, stationed at the South Pole.

After weeks in which they avoided the media, the team published its work Thursday in the US journal Physical Review Letters.

In a summary, the team said their models "are not sufficiently constrained by external public data to exclude the possibility of dust emission bright enough to explain the entire excess signal," as stated by other scientists who questioned their conclusion. Story COntinues

True test of science progress, admitting when they got it wrong and moving forward toward a broader understanding.

NPR radio report of the WOW Signal from 2007. Now there have been several reports of the Australian radio telescope detecting several more WOW signals. But my ears perked up when they said similar signal was detected at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico and I think he said Europe as well. This means that a new class of radio signal is being detected, maybe very natural, but then again maybe not. Papers are being reviewed and will be published in the professional journals this year yet.

Missed us by that much.
Projected Trillions of dollars in damage to the US alone if the Earth had been struck.

That was a close one! Study: Massive solar storm barely missed us in 2012
By Carter Maguire

"Here comes the sun" indeed, and it was just barely all right.

Two years ago, modern infrastructure came very close to a serious disruption. The culprit? One of the largest solar storms in recorded history.

Plasma exploding from the surface of the sun in a coronal mass ejection barreled through space and crossed through Earth's orbital path on July 23, 2012.

If the flare had erupted about one week earlier, Earth would have been squarely in the line of fire, Daniel N. Baker wrote in a study published in the journal Space Weather. (Baker is with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado). Story Continues

The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but
progress. -- Joseph JoubertAttachment 1008

I recall a probe called Stardust a few years back collected dust samples from a comet tail, but Rosetta plans to land probe. That will be exciting!

'We're in orbit!' Rosetta becomes first spacecraft to orbit comet
By Dave Gilbert and Nick Thompson

After a 10-year chase taking it billions of miles across the solar system, the Rosetta spacecraft made history Wednesday as it became the first probe to rendezvous with a comet on its journey around the sun.

"Thruster burn complete. Rosetta has arrived at comet 67P. We're in orbit!" announced the European Space Agency, which is leading the ambitious project, on Twitter.

Rosetta fired its thrusters on its final approach to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, known as "Chury" for short, on Wednesday morning. Half an hour after the burn, scientists announced that the craft had entered into the orbit of the streaking comet.

"After 10 years, five months and four days travelling towards our destination, looping around the Sun five times and clocking up 6.4 billion kilometers, we are delighted to announce finally 'we are here'," said Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA's Director General, in a statement.

"Europe's Rosetta is now the first spacecraft in history to rendezvous with a comet, a major highlight in exploring our origins. Discoveries can start."

ESA tweeted a photo of the comet after Rosetta's maneuver. Chury and the space probe now lie some 405 million kilometers from Earth, about half way between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars, according to ESA.

The mission has now achieved the first of what it hopes will be a series of historic accomplishments. In November mission controllers aim to place the robotic lander Philae on the surface -- something that has never been done before.

Previous missions have performed comet fly-bys but Rosetta is different. This probe will follow the comet for more than a year, mapping and measuring how it changes as it is blasted by the sun's energy.Story Continues

The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but
progress. -- Joseph JoubertAttachment 1008